Being a grown up has a lot perks but it can also be shitty, complicated and a bit of a nuisance. When I get into one of these moods where I wish I could stomp around in a tantrum, comfort food from my childhood can often intuitively turn me back into a reasonable adult-like person. The recipe below is for one of my favourites that my mum makes. Chapatis (unleavened Indian flat bread) dipped very generously into ‘gur’ – date palm jaggery which is basically Indian maple syrup. It also is made from sugar cane but date palm is MUCH better. My mum used to make it as a treat for my sister and I when we were little and even now, getting a text from my mum saying ‘I have gur’, makes me reconsider my weekend plans and head home instead. There is something incredibly luxurious and satisfying in dunking pieces of a chapati into a rich, dark, sweet gooiness and then licking my sticky fingers. Back to enjoying the perks of being a grown up.
For the gur
250g block of date palm gur
3tbsp water
A saucepan for melting the gur
For the chapatis (makes about 8)
300g whole meal wheat flour
100g buckwheat flour
100g spelt flour
2tbsp white flour
2 tsp oil (sunflower, rapeseed etc )
A little cold water to make the dough
Take the block of gur and place in a heated (low heat) saucepan. Add the water and wait for the block to melt. Once it starts to bubble, take it off the heat and allow to cool. The syrup mixture will thicken into a gorgeous molasses-like consistency.
For the chapatis, mix all the ingredients together until the dough mixture is a little firm, not too wet or dry. Should be easy to roll out. Think play dough. Divide up the dough into eight balls and make into patties. Spread a little flour on the kitchen top before rolling out. The chapatis should be round and about 0.5mm thick. Heat up a flat griddle pan and place a chapati on it. Should take about 3-4 minutes to be dine, flipping a couple of times. And when it starts to fluff up a bit, use a spatula to pay down the edges to more volume.
Serve warm with the gur. Dunk to your heart’s delight.
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